Responding to Cam’s Response
Cam, I appreciate your point of view, and I don’t disagree with anything you said. When it comes to Pastor Wright, I think the guy is a total whack ass. But at the end of the day, Barrack Obama doesn’t subscribe to Pastor Wright’s views. He has said that he doesn’t. So why is it fair to attack him for his pastor’s views? In short, IMHO, it isn’t.
Jim: Marshall, like Cam, I hate to disagree. Eh, who am I kidding? I like going tooth and nail with a mind I respect.
Marshall, you wrote, “Anyone who has a close relationship with their pastor has experienced what Barrack Obama described today.”
Really? I don’t have any particularly close relationships with a pastor, so I’ll admit, I can’t relate. But have you ever had your pastor say something that you not merely disagree strongly with, but that leave you slackjawed, as I presume the whole AIDS/USofKKKA/God d*** America troika did? (I realize these things are personal, so you don’t have to reply; treat that as rhetorical as necessary.) I’ve heard homilies that have left me rolling my eyes, but nothing on par with Wright’s. I think the order of magnitude of degree of shock and appall is so different, that Obama’s invoking the weekly disagreements on politics in the pews was comparing apples and oranges.
“And to hold Senator Obama responsible for Pastor Wright’s views is, in my view, totally unfair.”
Are we holding Obama responsible for Wright’s views? Or are we holding him responsible for his choice of mentor, his choice of which church to join, his choice to stay once he heard what he found so objectionable, his choice to bring his daughters to a house of worship that taught such things, and his choice to, to the best of our knowledge, avoid a painful discussion with his friend and mentor about what he preaches from the pulpit? Others have decided that Trinity United Church of Christ was not for them, among them Obama’s friend Oprah.
A man who claims to have dedicated his career to good, clean government chooses to buy his house with Tony Rezko, and a man who claims to have dedicated his life to racial reconciliation chooses to attend a church that teaches that the government created AIDS to commit genocide against minorities. Obama has this strange habit of choosing a path that takes him in the opposite direction of his stated goal.
Marshall, I guess I think you’re being too kind when you say with such certainty “Barack Obama doesn’t subscribe to Pastor Wright’s views.” Indeed, he claims he doesn’t. But there are strange echoes of Wright in his wife’s comments that America is a country that is “just downright mean” or that Obama’s success is the first time she’s been proud of America in her adult life, or that every woman she knows is struggling to keep her head above water (including, presumbly, her friend Oprah). She, like Wright, seems at times to suggest that America is a relentlessly rotten place, full of cruelty and injustice, and that the only proper solution is to elect her husband president.
For certain public figures, their record is long enough and clear enough that some accusations are just silly. Lefty bloggers tried to tag John McCain with the anti-Catholicism of Texas televangelist John Hagee, who endorsed him. But there’s nothing in McCain’s record to suggest anti-Catholicism, and the accusation is laughable to the Catholics who work for him. (I think it’s safe to say John McCain doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking about theological differences among branches of Christianity.)
What does Barack Obama really think, really say, when the cameras and microphones are put away and it’s just Michelle and him, or Pastor Jeremiah and him? Does he agree with their angrier, more divisive statements when he’s away from the prying eyes of public scrutiny? When they talk about America and whites and blacks, does he sound like the Obama we’ve seen in the spotlight for the past four years? Or does he sound more like Michelle or Wright?
I don’t know. And I don’t think anyone outside their closest inner circle knows, either.